Tissue damages and defects can be the results of many conditions, including, but not limited to, disease, surgery, environmental exposure, injury, and aging. Tissue damages defects also take on many forms, making the treatment of them account for a large Part of health-care resources. Examples of organs and body parts where tissue damages and defects may occur are:                Cardiovascular                    Heart, including coronary artery,            Angioplasty of coronary vessels,            Blood vessels            Spinal cord (neural and neuromuscular)                        Orthopaedic                    Bone, cartilage, tendon, and ligament            Breast                        Gastrointestinal                    Liver, gallbladder, bile duct            Pancreas (diabetes)            Intestinal                        Other                    Urinary system including kidney            Skin            Hernia            Dental            Blood transfusions (units of blood)See, Science 1993; 260: 920-26.                        
Treatment for tissue damage and defects has attracted resources from such diverse fields as medicine, chemistry, and engineering. The results of these efforts, however, have been both encouraging and disappointing. This is partly due to the fact that tissues are not only composed of different type of cells but also from different organs and body parts. Therefore, they have different characters and react differently to a method of treatment or a specific material.
One type of treatment for tissue damage and defects involves the implant of artificial devices to facilitate tissue repair and generation. For example U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,981,825 and 5,716,404 disclose anatomically specific and bioresorbable implant devices for facilitating the healing of voids in bone, cartilage, and soft tissue. Besides the fact that they are only suitable for certain types of tissue defects, these methods and devices are often intrusive and require surgical procedures, resulting in discomfort to the patients and even rejection by the body.
Another type of treatment for tissue damage is the emerging tissue engineering technique, which often employ the combination of artificial and biological approaches to facilitate the body's own effort to heal or generate new tissues. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,885,829 discloses methods for regenerating dental and oral tissues from viable cells using ex vivo culture on a structural matrix. The regenerated tissues may then be applied to patients in need of such tissue repair. Although this type of tissue engineering promises to provide effective tissue repair and construction for many tissue deficiencies, they often involve expensive, complex and intrusive procedures. And, despite the great effort and progress made in in vitro and ex vivo cell culture technique, the body's acceptance of engineered tissues is still unpredictable.
Methods of using cultured cells and/or extracellular matrix alone or combining with artificial devices have also been developed for tissue construction and generation. This type of treatment often involves the culture of cells and extracellular matrix and the implantation of them into the body thereof. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,919,707discloses a method for the isolation and use of pre-chondrocytes from umbilical cord that gives rise to chondrocytes which produce cartilage for implantation to repair tissue deficiencies. U.S. Pat. No. 5,830,708 discloses methods for producing naturally secreted human extracellular matrix material which are useful for the repair of soft tissue and skin defects. Although this type of methods are less intrusive and may be modified to avoid the use of surgical procedures, they usually do not provide the necessary mechanical strength to facilitate more effective tissue generation. Further, by primarily relying on cultured cells and extracellular matrix, these methods also increase the risk of rejection by the body.
The development of techniques that enable the isolation, purification, and culturally expansion of stem cells has provided a potent new tool for tissue construction and generation. “Stem cell” is a term used to describe a “generic” cell that is capable of growing to become numerous types of other specialized cells that perform specific body functions (like brain cells, muscle cells, bone cells, or blood cells). The ultimate stem cell would thus be a fertilized human egg, which consists of one cell, but has the instructions and capability to become every different type of cell within the human body.
Next to the embryo would be the totipotent embryonic stem cell. Embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated cells that are unlike any specific adult cell. They have the ability to form any adult cell. Because undifferentiated embryonic stem cells can proliferate indefinitely in culture, they could potentially provide an unlimited source of specific, clinically important adult cells such as bone, muscle, liver or blood cells. Yet, despite recent development in isolation and culturing of embryonic stem cells, their application in tissue repair and generation is still far from practical.
Thus, scientists have turned their attention to the more “committed” stem cells, which are cells that are capable of becoming many types, but not all types, of cells. Some examples of these would be “hematopoietic” stem cells, which are capable of forming all types of blood cells, or “neuronal” stem cells, which are capable of forming all types of brain cells. Thus, for example, a hematopoietic stem cell could not be made to produce brain cells.
Stem cells that can divide into more than one types of other cells are called pluripotent stem cells. One specific line of pluripotent stem cells important to tissue construction and generation are stromal stem cells or mesenchymal stem cells.
Mesenchymal stem cells (“MSCs”) are the formative pluripotent blast cells found, inter alia, in bone marrow, blood, dermis and periosteum that are capable of differentiating into any of the specific types of mesenchymal or connective tissues (i.e., the tissues of the body that support the specialized elements; particularly adipose, osseous, cartilaginous, elastic, and fibrous connective tissues) depending upon various influences from bioactive factors, such as cytokines. Studies have confirmed that MSCs are capable of being differentiated into bone, cartilage, muscle, fat, and connective tissue cells. See, e.g., Owen, J. Cell Sci., Suppl. 10:63 (1988).
MSCs, therefore, are the body's storehouse of potential spare parts. Inside the body, there are pockets of unspecialized MSCs, tucked into a variety of places, that can migrate to an injury and, responding to signals in the milieu, embark on a normal developmental pathway to become what's needed. They are not totipotent, as are embryonic stem cells, but pluripotent, capable of differentiating into bone, muscle, cartilage, and connective tissue and their derivatives. Neither are they as far along the developmental trajectory as hematopoietic stem cells used to replenish bone marrow, or the neural stem cells that researchers recently rerouted to produce hematopoietic cells. Thus, MSCs have become the focus of development efforts relating to tissue construction and generation.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,226,914 discloses processes and devices for utilizing isolated and culturally expanded marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells for treating skeletal and other connective tissue disorders. The '914 patent discloses a process of isolating and purifying marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells prior to differentiation and then culturally expanding to produce a tool for skeletal therapy.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,906,934 discloses a method for growing articular cartilage or subchondral bone in a patient by administering certain mesenchymal stem cells seeded in a polymeric carrier suitable for proliferation and differentiation of the cells into articular cartilage or subchondral bone. Thus, for purposes of tissue construction and generation, mesenchymal stem cells are a practical source of potential supply of cells for many different types of tissues.
Tissue bulking techniques have also been used in tissue construction and generation. Liquid or semi-liquid preparations with various degrees of viscosity have been used for this purpose. An example is silk-elastin protein polymers from Protein Polymer Technologies, Inc. These preparations are injectable, but they have on or more of the following limitations: (1) the “protein polymers” are gradually displaced within the tissue in which it was originally injected, thereby reduce or eliminating the intended tissue repair effect; (2) the “protein polymers” are digested biologically, through the lymphatic system or by other means, thus causing possible adverse effects as well as reducing tissue repair effect; and (3) the “protein polymers” tend to form a continuous foreign mass within the tissue after injection thereof, impeding tissue construction and generation.
Prior to the present invention, microspheres have been manufactured and marketed for in vitro use in anchorage dependent cell culture. (Van Vezel, A. L., Nature, 216:64-65 (1967); Levine et al., Somatic Cell Genetics, 3:149-155 (1977); Obrenovitch et al., Biol. Cell., 46:249-256 (1983)). They have also been used in vivo to occlude blood vessels in the treatment of arteriovascular malformation, fistulas and tumors (See, U.S. Pat. No. 5,635,215 to Boschetti et al; Laurent et al., J Am. Soc. Neuroiol, 17:533-540 (1996); and Beaujeux et al. J Am. Soc. Neuroial, A:533-540 (1996)).
Further, direct implantation of cells into living tissues such as brain or liver to correct specific deficiencies has been attempted albeit with a number of failures. The major problems associated with direct cell transplantation are the long term viability of the cell transplant and the immunopathological as well as histological responses. Microparticles with cells attached on their surface have been used in some in vivo applications. Cherkesey et al., IBRO, 657-664 (1996), described the culture of adrenal cells on coated dextran beads and the implantation into mammalian brain to supplant some specific disorders related to 6-hydroxydopamine-induced unilateral lesions of the substantia nigra. The pre-attachment of cells to dextran microcarriers allowed for improved functions of the cells implanted into the brain. Also liver cells transplantation has been used to manage acute liver failure, or for the replacement of specific deficient functions such as conjugation of bilirubin or synthesis of albumin. For this purpose, an intrasplenic injection of hepatocytes grown on the surface of microspheres was performed (Roy Chowdhury et al., in: Advanced Research on Animal Cell Technology, AOA Miller ed., 315-327, Kluers Acad. Press, 1989).
Therefore, there is a great need for safe, biocompatible, stable and effective methods of tissue construction and generation. There is also a need for stable and biocompatible injectable composition for tissue repairing.